Tag: Public Health and Safety

Health, News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Uncategorized

Liberty and Life

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I’m not a fan of memes. Too often the social-media populace relies on memes as a substitute for journalistically sound news.

But I recently saw a meme that so beautifully represented the absurdity of politicizing virus mitigation. It contrasted the enormity of the sacrifices made by the Greatest Generation during WWII — the pitch-in, can-do spirit of the war-time era — with the politically obstinate Americans who refuse to wear a mask today. After all, a mask is a small, finite sacrifice proven to reduce the spread of the virus, and as a byproduct will get us all back to work, to recreation, to communing, to fully living again.

A true patriot doesn’t champion personal liberty at the very expense of the nation.

Politics & Public Policy, Uncategorized

A Parable: Moose Hunts and Pandemic

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Long before we found ourselves sequestered in the wilds of northern Vermont, I became concerned about moose. Though a friend who lives in Vermont describes them as “the dumbest animals to walk the earth,” I find them quite intriguing – their fortitude, their height and weight, their ability to adapt to harsh conditions, to navigate treacherous forest floors. I appreciate how the mothers care for their young, how they bed down in the snow, and I’m fascinated with how the males annually grow their awe-inspiring racks. The new antlers are covered with a soft velvet as they emerge in the spring, which the moose violently scrape during by September, rubbing them against trees until the bloody velvet falls to the ground, often taking a tree’s bark with it.

I’m intrigued by the annual rut – when hormones are on high – and how the males battle for territory. Men!

I eagerly await the first sound of a moose mating call and would likely squeal with glee if I ever stumble upon a cow and her new calf.

My husband’s coworker is stationed up in Maine. He’s a hearty sort, who spends time at a seasonal camp, hunts, and knows just about everything you need to know about living and surviving in the woods. He’s been a wellspring of information for us this year, as we learn to navigate the forest and coexist with the animals that have now ousted us from the top of our local food chain, as they say on survivalist shows.

A few years back, he bemoaned Maine’s tick problem and reported that the local moose population was being decimated by them. He said the moose up there are literally covered in ticks. Here, too.

I looked into this, and read an article about one account of a moose emerging from the forest with an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 ticks on it. I suppose math was involved in that estimation. I doubt they were picked off and counted, one by one.

Ticks are bad here, too. We have to take extra precautions – for us and for our dog – when we return from time spent outdoors.

The moose population in northern Vermont is reportedly not as plentiful as it once was. Locals here tell us that a decade ago you couldn’t drive around the region without spotting them, and that every landowner had at least one moose roaming the acreage. They were everywhere, and the signs along Vermont’s roads and highways are a testament to that bygone era. I see plenty of signs of moose out on the property – horseshoe-shaped hoof prints in the snow and mud, mounds of almond-shaped scat. But I have yet to spot one for myself. Those that remain in our forest are quite adept at keeping a low profile.

The decrease in the moose population concerned me, and even more so when I heard that Vermont was going to allow a rather generous number of moose-hunt licenses this year – 55 licenses are expected to harvest 33 moose this year.

You might wonder why a person would want to hunt a moose. It’s not for sustenance. Mounted bull moose heads do fetch a pretty penny. In St. Johnsbury, we discovered a place that specializes in all sorts of taxidermy – everything from full-standing bear to kitschy raccoons paired up and placed in little birch canoes, like they’re out for a paddle on a river.

Standing beneath a mounted moose head is humbling perspective, and well-done mounts can cost tens of thousands of dollars. But how many people have that kind of money, room, or the desire to have a moose mount on their living room walls? Is there a market for 33 of them of this year alone, I wondered?

It turns out that the reason for the hunt has nothing to do with big-game prizes, and everything to do with the tick population. If ticks can’t find a host, they move along to where they can. In theory, thinning out the moose also thins out the ticks.

As much as I don’t like the idea of gunning down a beautiful, regal, elusive beast – just out loping around in the forest, minding its own damn business – I can understand this countermeasure. If you think about it, it’s not unlike stay-at-home orders during the time of pandemic. The only way COVID-19 continues to thrive and perpetuate is if it finds readily available hosts.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not anxious to be a human-equivalent tick-covered moose, nor a dead moose. Things may be “opening up” around the country, as the idea of “herd immunity” and “culling the herd” – the sacrificing of vulnerable Americans* – seems to be gaining popularity, but I’m going to stay put for now.

How about you?

 

*Vulnerable Americans refers to both the elderly and people with pre-existing, co-morbid conditions. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 50 to 129 million NON-ELDERLY Americans have some form of pre-existing health condition.

News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Uncategorized

The White House Task Force Briefings Should No Longer Be Televised

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Since the creation of the White House task force, and the President’s naming of his Vice President, Mike Pence, as its mealymouthed leader, there has been a steady drumbeat from media critics who think the Press should tune out.

They’ve argued that the President has done more harm than good by holding these nearly daily on-camera events. I wholeheartedly disagreed, primarily because he’s the President, and without a functioning Press Secretary – the new one refuses to work with us, like her predecessor – these are precious opportunities to carry the President’s messages to the American people, allowing them to judge for themselves the content, and to question him, challenge him, and speak truth to power, as is our role and responsibility.

I have held that belief for all these exhausting weeks, even when the President missed every opportunity to express genuine, sincere empathy for those who are sick, the tens of thousands who have died horrific deaths, or to their families who are forced to grieve in silence, alone.

I believed we had to cover the briefings even when it became clear that the President’s posturing would always be to deflect criticism, to shirk responsibility, and to pick petty fights with Governors who have been desperate for information, gear, equipment and financial aid – desperate to try to save their constituents lives.

I felt we should still cover the briefings even when the President would openly question his own appointees to the task force – infectious-disease experts who come equipped with data and analyses that he flippantly disregards in real time.

Even when critics cried, “He’s using these as substitute campaign rallies,” I still felt we have to cover them. To ignore them would be irresponsible and a dereliction of our duty, right?

I, along with so many of my colleagues in news, have cringed when he’s used the precious time to admonish journalists, especially women reporters, accusing anyone who asks a pointed, legitimate question of being “fake news” or worse. The tough-guy act feels like a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, it’s textbook Orwellian; if you can convince people not to believe anything, they won’t believe the truth about you. The other purpose, I believe, is to create audio and video clips for conservative media outlets to run, showing the President “fighting back” – macho and chest thumping.

I suppose with some people who are firmly planted in the President’s corner, no matter his egregious unforced errors, it works to get their blood boiling, their anger stoked. It juices up the base.

A hard-boiled German who’s been around, even I welled up the day the President boasted about how great the ratings were for his briefings, as New York City and other communities across the nation zipped up hundreds of body bags in that single day. The lack of empathy was shocking, gutting really. It made me question if we’ll live through this – as individuals and as a nation.

Admittedly, as the time has passed, I have questioned the approach of the Press sitting before him. I believed that if they could simply target their questions to the experts and keep them keenly focused on the public health and safety information Americans need to know, that it would somehow keep these briefings from veering off course.

I suggested to broadcasters that they factor in a longer delay so that they could digitally filter out anything that was overtly false or potentially harmful to the viewing public. None of that has worked.

The President went on to use the briefings to recklessly promote a drug that hadn’t been rigorously tested through clinical trials as a treatment for COVID-19 infection. Despite warnings across the globe that its use was linked to heart failure and stroke in these cases, he continued to promote it. Lupus patients suddenly couldn’t get their prescriptions filled for the drug, putting their very lives at risk while the President continued to promote it. We later learned that he has a financial stake in the pharmaceutical company that makes it.

Donald J. Trump also used taxpayer dollars to produce a campaign video, which he shamelessly played during one notorious briefing, perking up the ears of watchdog agencies. He’s defied social/physical distance rules established by the White House Correspondents Association, designed to keep the Press and the President himself safe from infection during these daily meetings. He’s repeatedly invited pet network OANN into the room in defiance of these very rules, allowing its “reporters” to pitch him softball, seemingly planned and scripted questions designed to stroke the President’s ego and disparage political opponents. It’s right out of the Authoritarian Playbook.

I have been hyperaware of the lack of real leadership on display here. A leader, even in cases of notable accomplishments and success, reflects back and thinks: “How could we have done even better?” There’s no introspection by the President of the United States. He is incapable of it.

And still – even with all this in our wake – I was of the mind that the Press had to broadcast and cover these briefings, because he’s the President of the United States, and it is our duty to shine lights on him whenever we have access, and especially when we don’t.

But that’s all changed for me now. I have come around to the position the critics have taken – that we should no longer broadcast these briefings in real time. My professional opinion changed when the President used last weeks’ time before the American people to encourage the protesters who have taken the streets – some dressed as if they’re going to war, some sporting swastika and other antisemitic symbols, others with Confederate flags – to defy the very orders his own task force established. For weeks, the President, the Vice President, the doctors, and other members of the Administration have stood before us preaching the importance of following the guidelines and reading from lists of things that the President said we should all be grateful for – Federally supplied personal protection equipment, respirators, financial aid, military vessels and personnel, field hospitals, short-lived testing sites, and more.

Now, the President and the Vice President are lauding the protesters, empathizing with their “cabin fever,” and refusing to admonish their reckless disregard for the health and safety of not just “the others” – their fellow American citizens – but their own health and that of their own families. It overtly demonstrates that the President and the Vice President have not taken their roles seriously, that they haven’t even bought into the guidelines they’ve established, and that they do not care how many Americans will die as a result of their politicking.

There’s a Willie Nelson song that goes, “Turn out the lights; the party’s over. They say that all good things must end.” The White House Task Force briefings had the potential to do some really good things – to inform the public, to help keep us all safe. They haven’t risen to the occasion.

Legitimate news organizations should shut off the lights and remove the cameras from the briefing room. Send in your reporters, but cover the briefings straight, giving no room for the President to make an on-camera mockery out of them and us.

The public-servant doctors on the task force should take a different approach, too. It’s time to “go rogue” and speak directly to the American people without the President’s political filter. It’s long overdue. Our nation is depending on you.